N is for 98 Point 6 Degrees of Separation
by Jelsemium
Summary: I know people bargain with You all the time. I know that forgiveness is probably too much to ask for, but please, this one thing and I'll never ask for anything again. Sequel to the other Summer 2006 Summer Alpha challenge story, T is for Terminal
1. Chapter 1

N is for 98.6 Degrees of Separation  
An A/U Numb3rs fan fic

Disclaimer: The characters are not mine. I'm taking the fifth about the fuzzy pink handcuffs, though.

Rating: T to be safe  
Author's Note: This is the sequel to T is for Terminal The author (that's me) suggests you read that first.

Description: _"I know people bargain with You all the time. I know that forgiveness is probably too much to ask for, but please, this one thing and I'll never ask for anything again."_

Don looked away from the prone figure on the bed and scanned the honeymoon suite, and gaped for a moment at the sight of a computer on the desk. Who the hell surfed the web on their honeymoon? Except geeks, of course.

And people who needed an instruction manual.

The corners of his mouth twitched, but the smile faded quickly. He shot an apologetic look at the man on the bed. That had been an unworthy thought.

He studied the man silently for a few minutes.

The hooked nose and dark, unruly hair advertised the victim's ethnic origin. He was slightly under average height; slender in build, but not too thin. He didn't look malnourished or unhealthy. There were no obvious signs of damage. There were no signs of foul play.

Well, other than the pink, fuzzy handcuffs that bound him to the headboard and a three foot, tubular sandbag that was draped across his ankles like an affectionate dachshund.

Don leaned over to examine the handcuffs more closely and found himself staring into dark brown eyes.

The victim blinked.

Don couldn't help gloating, not that he tried hard. He said, "Hey, Charlie. Long time, no see."

Naturally, Charlie tried to sit up. Obviously, that wasn't going to happen.

Charlie raised his hands as best he could and studied the handcuffs. His brow puckered, but he made no comment. After ascertaining that he was, indeed, handcuffed, Charlie returned his attention to Don.

Don breathed a sigh of relief when Charlie didn't immediately react with anger. He backed up and grabbed the desk chair and straddled it. It was important not to crowd Charlie, especially not physically.

"Suppose I shout for help?" Charlie asked.

Don held up his badge. "I warned management that I was going to be questioning somebody that I thought had stolen Charles Eppes' identity."

Charlie's left cheek twitched.

"Can we talk?" Don asked. He folded his arms across the chair back and watched his brother worriedly.

"Obviously," Charlie said in neutral tones.

Don sighed.

Charlie continued. "I think our problem has always been listening."

Don snorted, but he couldn't disagree. Besides the use of "our" was promising. "Um, yeah." He pointed at the fuzzy cuffs. "You can just pull on those," he said.

Charlie studied the cuffs for a few minutes. He gave a few tentative tugs and pulled his hands free from the cuffs. He studied his wrists for a few minutes, as if checking for damage.

Satisfied on that score, Charlie sat up slowly, and looked at the weight across his ankles. He picked up the sandbag and looked up at Don with a bemused expression. "You tied me up with fuzzy pink cuffs and a draft doggie?"

"Well," Don drew that out for a minute. "They were mainly there to prevent you from rolling off the bed, or making a mad dash for the door when you saw me."

"Ah," Charlie said. He looked soberly at Don and rubbed his temples.

"How do you feel?" Don asked, nervously.

"Groggy," Charlie said. "What did you hit me with?" He paused. "And how?"

"Any pain?" Don pressed.

Charlie shook his head. "How?" he repeated.

Don fought of the semi-hysterical urge to say, "Now brown cow." Instead, he opted for a more informative answer. "A little cocktail that my friend Karen Fischer whipped up. Carefully tailored to your body weight and estimated drinking pattern." Don paused. "Rather, pattern of lack of drinking alcoholic beverages."

Charlie frowned. "How could you be sure that I wouldn't drink anything?" His eyes went wide as he remembered his reception and what he had eaten and drunk. "Amita or Dad must have been…"

Don shifted uneasily.

Charlie's voice trailed off and his eyes went wider. When he finally managed to speak again, there was a definite squeak in his voice. "Were _both_ of them in on it?"

"They want us to patch things up," Don said. "Please don't be mad at them."

Charlie stared at him, obviously trying to process this information. "Where is Amita?" he finally managed, still in a rather squeaky voice.

"She and Dad are helping Terry out," Don said.

Charlie looked utterly bewildered and Don couldn't blame him.

"I came to Boston to crash your wedding," Don confessed. "But I lost my nerve at the last minute and started to head home. I met Terry in the airport, in the middle of leaving her husband. We made a pact to try for reconciliation."

"Go on," Charlie said. "Wait. Terry and her husband were on the guest list. I take it you escorted her instead?"

Don nodded.

"Did anyone see…?" Charlie shook that question off. "Never mind, I guess I don't care if anybody saw you. I wouldn't have wanted to know." He sighed and pulled his knees up. "So everbody I know is in on this conspiracy."

"You say conspiracy like it's a bad thing," Don said, in an attempt at humor.

Charlie wrapped his arms around his knees and rested his forehead on his forearms.

Don nodded. "I wanted to say something to you at the reception…"

"What exactly are Dad and Amita doing for Terry?" Charlie said. "Putting rohypnol in Terry's husband's drink? He was at the wedding, you know. He introduced himself and said he'd come stag."

"We saw him," Don said. "Did you tell him that Terry was there? You did see her, right?"

Charlie nodded, then said. "I spoke to Terry, but I didn't tell Wade that she was there."

Don sighed. "Terry didn't expect him to show up. Made our plot to get him to talk to Terry a little easier, though."

"What happened?"

"Simple, Dad and Amita followed him to his hotel, and Amita started flirting with him in the hotel bar."

"I hope she'd changed clothes by then," Charlie said mildly.

Don chuckled a little at the image of a woman in a wedding gown flirting in a hotel bar. "I hope you aren't mad," Don said. He studied his brother to see if maybe the dosage had been too much. Karen was a few floors above them in case of emergency. She had literally flown to Boston on a moment's notice when Don had called on her for help."

"No. I'm still too confused to get angry. Go on." Charlie looked up, and Don decided that while he was still a little groggy, there didn't seem to be any serious side effects.

"Um, well, Amita gave him an extra hotel key, which Wade assumed was for her room."

"It's Terry's room?"

"Yes," Don said. "Then things became musical rooms. Dad took the room I booked and Amita is in Dad's room."

Charlie raised his eyebrows.

Don shrugged. "Well, it seemed like the best plan at the time."

"Oh."

"Congratulations, by the way. Amita is a trooper."

"Thank you," Charlie said automatically. "She's a good sport. One of the reasons she'll put up with me, I guess."

"So, how do you like it out here? Do you miss teaching?"

"I hate the winters," Charlie said. He shrugged. "I still do guest lectures and consulting. Not as good as full time teaching. However, Cal Sci has offered me my job back and I think I'll be able to take them up that. Amita wants to go back to California, too. So she won't be renewing her contract with Harvard."

"Good," Don said. "Dad will be happy to have you closer."

An awkward silence fell between them. Charlie began to look pointedly at the door, and Don spoke up. "I know that I've never been gracious about accepting apologies from you, and that you are tired of accepting apologies from me. But I really wish I that could at least make a stab at doing _something_ to make it up to you. To make up for that fight and all the other times that I've been so out of line."

Charlie sat in silence for a long time. Don shifted uneasily, but as long as Charlie didn't order him out of the room, he was going to stay.

Finally Charlie looked at him and Don was alarmed to see the greyness had seeped back into his face. "Don, after you left… that day… I couldn't sleep. About 5 AM I gave up, wrote Dad an apology and took off on my bike. I decided against using my car. I still think that was a good decision, considering my state of mind."

Don straightened in alarm.

"I started towards school, but then… I wound up at the bridge."

"The one where Finn…"

"Yeah, the one Finn Montgomery jumped from. There's a reason it's called Suicide Bridge… a reason Finn chose it."


	2. Chapter 2

N is for 98.6 Degrees of Separation

Chapter 2

There was silence as Don tried to digest what Charlie had just told him.

"I leaned against the railing for… I dunno… a couple of hours? Most of my life? And wondered what you would say if you were there. I wondered what I would say to you if you showed up. I wondered how Dad, Amita and Larry would feel."

"I wondered what dying would feel like."

Don swallowed, but his voice was gone.

"I couldn't bring myself to call the suicide hotline. I didn't want to get Megan or Terry involved. I didn't want to wake Dad or Larry." Charlie closed his eyes. "Not for that."

He sighed. "Amita, here in Massachusetts, would have been awake at that hour, but that seemed like such a supremely selfish thing to do. To call her up just to die on her."

There was another long pause.

Charlie finally continued. "I'd called Finn's parents a couple of times during the investigation, and you know how my memory for numbers is. Mr. Montgomery answered the phone and we made small talk. He said that they was doing as well as could be expected under the circumstances."

"He also said that while the hurt fades to manageable levels, it never really goes away. He said that there isn't a day that goes by when he doesn't wonder if there wasn't some sign he missed. Something he could have done…" Charlie's voice trailed off.

Don swallowed, hard. "You think he knew what you were planning?"

Charlie's mouth quirked. "Finn didn't come from a stupid family," he said. "And there I was, calling from out of the blue at the crack of dawn to talk about suicide."

Don couldn't look at Charlie any more. He wondered if he'd ever be able to look himself in the mirror again. "Charlie, I wish…"

Charlie shrugged. "Before I hung up, I promised Mr. Montgomery that I'd take care of myself. Then I rode to my office."

"What then?"

"Dad showed up at my office at ten after eight and tried to casually grill me about what my apology was for. I told him that I'd decided to sell the house after all. That it was… too much work."

Another pause.

"Did he buy that?"

Charlie shrugged. "You know I'm utter crap at lying."

He unclasped his hands and stared at them. "For weeks after that, I noticed that Larry, Megan, David and even Colby seemed to need my assistance at all hours of the day and night. Dad had dozens of questions about the sale of the house. Amita suddenly needed to see her parents every weekend, and of course she'd drop by to see me."

He sighed. "I also started seeing a shrink."

And nobody had told Don. "I can see why you'd want me out of the loop."

Charlie shook his head and went back to his story. ""I expect that you would have been brought in, if I didn't look like I was snapping out of it. Anyway, that's when I decided that I needed time off from teaching."

He managed a tiny smile. "Well, that part worked out better than I expected, as witness my recent nuptials. And it gives me lots of time to work on my Cognitive Emergence theory."

Don decided that it was time to leave. Terry would be so disappointed in him. "I see. I guess it was too much to hope that you wouldn't hate me."

Charlie grimaced. "Sometimes I think things would be easier if we _did_ hate each other."

Don's pulse leaped. It was a kick of adrenaline just like he used to get back when he was in Fugitive Recovery. Back then, it had meant that something was happening. Something that his subconscious had processed faster than his conscious.

After a second's review, Don realized what his subconscious was reacting to. _Please, dear God, I know you have people bargaining with You all the time. I know that forgiveness is probably too much to ask for, but please, this one thing and I'll never ask for anything again."_

"_IF_ we hated each other?" Don said carefully.

Charlie's spine straightened as if someone had pulled his head up by a string.

"Charlie, does that mean that you know, no matter how pig-headed, foul-mouthed and… and cruel that I've been that I have not… I have never… I could never hate you?"

_Please, oh, please, let him believe me. Just this one thing. _

Charlie looked Don squarely in the face for the first time. "Yes."

Oxygen once again flowed from Don's lungs to his blood. _Thank you. _"I guess that's what I really wanted to tell you," Don said. "I know you don't have any real reason to forgive me, but I wanted to make sure you knew that."

Charlie frowned. "You're not going to ask if I hate you?"

Don shook his head. "You have every right to," he said. "But I know you, Buddy, you haven't got an ounce of hate in you, and you never have."

"I'm not a saint, Don."

"Besides, you just said that you didn't hate me."

Charlie coughed and it was close to a laugh. "Okay. We don't hate each other. I guess that's all we can expect."

"I've been to counseling, too," Don said before Charlie could ask him to leave. "I even let them bump me up to a desk job."

Charlie looked at him blankly.

"You're not the only one I hurt," Don said. "Even my team felt… Anyway, working directly with them was awkward after you left." He looked at his hands. "I don't suppose anybody mentioned this."

"Well, Dad said that you weren't a field agent any more. I guess I just didn't think much about it," Charlie said. "Why did you do that? Did you decide to punish yourself with a job you hate?"

It wasn't really a question.

"Yeah, something like that," Don admitted. "I may move on from the Bureau soon. At least, if I can figure out something I'd rather do."

"Oh."

Don braced himself mentally and went for it. "I want to be part of your life again, Charlie. I want you to be in my life."

Charlie went back to staring at his hands and a hint of the greyness in his face darkened. "I'm sorry, Don. I can't… I can't go through that again."

"You shouldn't have had to go through that the first time," Don said. He took a deep breath. "Charlie, what you said about irrational behavior… Doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results?"

Charlie looked at him and Don took courage. "That's us… Our whole history. We keep going from one extreme to the other. Either we're practically joined at the hips, like high school or when we were working on cases together."

The greyness was fading. "Or we're not talking to each other at all," Charlie said. His gaze went to the TV cabinet across from the bed.

"It doesn't work. We need family… each other. There's got to be something in-between," Don pleaded. "Some sort of middle ground?"

Charlie studied Don's face. "I guess finding a different path would be the rational thing to do," he admitted. His face was back to its normal color.

"Thank you," Don said. "Maybe we, you, Dad and me, should see a family counselor?"

Charlie nodded. "The psychologist I'd been going to in Pasadena could probably suggest someone… AFTER I finish my honeymoon," he said. He actually smirked. "Since my plans for last night were… disrupted… I have some time to make up."

Don grinned; relief was making him giddy enough to risk a joke. "Cool. Maybe we could get in a game of golf?"

Charlie finally pointed at the door and ordered "_Out!_" But he smiled when he said it.

Don held up his hands in mock surrender. "I'll be back… Chuckie," he said in a dreadful Austrian accent.

Charlie laughed. "See you, then."


End file.
